Gmail offers free language translation

Posted May 2, 2012 - 08:46
by
Mark Raby

Google is trying to eliminate the language barrier when it comes to email.

Despite all the major technological advancements over the last few decades, fundamentally changing the way we communicate with one another, the language barrier is something that has largely remained unshattered.

Now, Google wants to change that in a seamless and user-friendly way, such that creating a dialogue with people who don't know a single word of your language, and vice versa.

Automatic message translation was a feature that lived in Gmail's "Google Labs" section for quite some time, and now due to its popularity and brilliant accuracy in its execution, Google has decided to make it a native Gmail feature.

"We heard immediately from Google Apps for Business users that this was a killer feature for working with local teams across the world," wrote Gmail product manager Jeff Chin in the Official Gmail Blog.

"Some people just wanted to easily read newsletters from abroad. Another person wrote in telling us how he set up his mom’s Gmail to translate everything into her native language, thus saving countless explanatory phone calls," Chin continued.

Users will notice a "Translate message" button within Gmail. Clicking this will automatically detect the language of the message and convert it into the language that you choose.

Or, if you want it to be even more seamless, there's an option for Gmail to automatically detect when a message is in a language other than your default langauge, and it will translate those emails without you needing to do anything. It's pretty cool.